Ever since Georgie could remember, his bedroom walls were adorned with circus iconography: elephants, zebras, giraffes, lions, circus tents, circus trains. This was his nursery wallpaper, and he had grown up alongside it. As time went on, his circus wallpaper was slowly replaced by a solid coating of baby blue paint on his walls. That is, all expect one last wall in his room, which still had the wallpaper. But now, his parents finally decided that that day had come. They would take down the last wall of his cherished, childhood wallpaper.
This was a bittersweet moment for Georgie. This marked the fact that he was growing up, and he wasn't exactly sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, growing older meant that he was one step closer to being a grown-up, and grown-ups don't have to follow rules like kids do—they can make up their own rules. But on the other hand, that also meant that he would be one step away from being a kid. And once you're not a kid anymore, you can't eat candy and sweets. You can't spend Saturday mornings in your pajamas and watch cartoons. You can't play pretend in your backyard that you're a spaceman discovering an alien planet, or an explorer navigating through the deep jungles of Africa. You have to go to work, and do whatever boring stuff it is that grown-ups do there. It was a bittersweet moment indeed.
"You ready to say goodbye to your circus wallpaper, Georgie?" Sharon asked her son.
"M-maybe?" Georgie mumbled, unsure of what he was feeling.
"What do you mean 'maybe'?" Sharon said. "Don't you want to be a big boy now?"
"I…I don't know if I do," Georgie began to cry.
"Why not?"
"Because…growing up is scary. I don't want to be a grown-up yet. I still want to be a kid."
"Oh, honey," Sharon began to comfort the young Denbrough, "just because you'll be a big boy doesn't mean you'll be a grown-up quite yet. You've still got time to be a kid; don't worry. And when the time comes to when you will have to be a grown-up, I promise, you'll be ready for it. Okay?"
"Okay," Georgie responded, still not completely comforted.
"Hey, I tell you what," Sharon proposed, "I'll save a patch of the wallpaper for us to keep forever. So you'll always have a piece of it to look back on. That sound like a good deal?"
"Yeah. I guess that's not too bad of an idea," Georgie said as he started to cheer up.
Sharon got a precision knife and cut out a square of the wallpaper that contained the entire pattern without repeating. She handed the square to Georgie. "Here! You hold onto this for life! Okay?"
"Okay!" Maybe if Georgie kept this piece of wallpaper with him for his whole life, it would be as though he'd be keeping a piece of his childhood alongside him at all times. And maybe then, growing up wouldn't be as bad as it seems.